Losing Donavohn Jones today was disappointing. I thought he had a shot to be an excellent safety. The JUCO safety, Duron Singleton, is likely to commit tomorrow and is the best JUCO S in the country, according to JUCO Junction.

I am worried about the secondary recruiting, though I think Aarion Penton is going to be a good CB.

Trenches... losing Jake Campos hurts. Clay Rhodes is going to be really good, I think. Gill should be serviceable. Sounds like they have an OK shot to land the former Florida OL commit from Georgia (friends with Printz).

DL... if Augusta and Antar Thompson can qualify, that's a strong pairing in the middle in this class. Losing DiMariya Mixon hurts a lot, because he already is a bigger guy and can be a great big DE or penetrating DT.

If they close, best-case scenario....

RB Ezekiel Elliott
S Duron Singleton
OL Josh Outlaw

This can be an ACCEPTABLE class (one that's good enough to help you stay in the 7-8 win range). The opportunity was there for this to be a foundation class that helped establish something better than that, and missing on it hurts a lot.

Acceptable is a bit of a stretch for me. We got no bump with the SEC level kids from entering that league. The season killed us and having Pinkel as a HC seems to be sucking the life out of this team. Just my opinion. I think kids have heard he could be a lame duck and it does not help that he has reverted a bit back to the ahole Gary we used to know.

I hate to use this word but there appears to be no swag around our Football team at all.

Missouri's biggest problem is that it is carrying a bunch of guys who are average-at-best recruiters who don't seem to work all that hard.

Andy Hill is a stud. Works his a$$ off in KC and also helps out the other guys a lot, as well as being the primary JUCO guy and a secondary rural MO guy.

Cornell Ford (St. Louis) and Josh Henson are OK. Both have good reps, but I wouldn't call either a spectacular recruiter. Ford has a lot of big wins, but he also has lost some St. Louis guys by not recruiting hard from the get-go (Case in point: EE. They thought they had some cushion with him because of his roots and focused elsewhere early. Ooops)

Beyond that?

Brian Smith and Bruce Walker are below-average to awful reruiters. Nice, boring guys that are never in on more than 2-3 kids a year. They're also average at best coaches. Real minuses on this staff, in my opinion.

It looks like Pinkel's nephew might fall in that category as well.

The new WR coach, Pat Washington, I think it's too early to tell. He has a decent background, but who knows?

Also, "fun" tidbit I heard recently... they liked a former player for the vacant WR job. He was ready to leave his previous job... turned it down to accept a job with the TSF making like $25k a year. Encouraging...

Losing Donavohn Jones today was disappointing. I thought he had a shot to be an excellent safety. The JUCO safety, Duron Singleton, is likely to commit tomorrow and is the best JUCO S in the country, according to JUCO Junction.

I am worried about the secondary recruiting, though I think Aarion Penton is going to be a good CB.

Trenches... losing Jake Campos hurts. Clay Rhodes is going to be really good, I think. Gill should be serviceable. Sounds like they have an OK shot to land the former Florida OL commit from Georgia (friends with Printz).

DL... if Augusta and Antar Thompson can qualify, that's a strong pairing in the middle in this class. Losing DiMariya Mixon hurts a lot, because he already is a bigger guy and can be a great big DE or penetrating DT.

If they close, best-case scenario....

RB Ezekiel Elliott
S Duron Singleton
OL Josh Outlaw

This can be an ACCEPTABLE class (one that's good enough to help you stay in the 7-8 win range). The opportunity was there for this to be a foundation class that helped establish something better than that, and missing on it hurts a lot.

They lost Jones, too?

Jesus. Just get tomorrow done already. There hasn't been a single shred of good news since the clock hit 0:00 in the Syracuse game.

Acceptable is a bit of a stretch for me. We got no bump with the SEC level kids from entering that league. The season killed us and having Pinkel as a HC seems to be sucking the life out of this team. Just my opinion. I think kids have heard he could be a lame duck and it does not help that he has reverted a bit back to the ahole Gary we used to know.

I hate to use this word but there appears to be no swag around our Football team at all.

When I say "ACCEPTABLE" I mean, barely, skin-of-your-teeth, acceptable. As in, not a program killer or one that moves your program backwards. It's also not a program that moves you forward unless you get really lucky with several guys (look at the 2006 class - think it ended up ranking No. 41 overall but re-ranks would have placed it in the top 10).

It's a shame, really, that Pinkel is not willing to be really cutthroat with guys like Brian Jones and Bruce Walker and Dave Christensen. His stubborn loyalty to them prevented him from taking his program to the next level.

When I say "ACCEPTABLE" I mean, barely, skin-of-your-teeth, acceptable. As in, not a program killer or one that moves your program backwards. It's also not a program that moves you forward unless you get really lucky with several guys (look at the 2006 class - think it ended up ranking No. 41 overall but re-ranks would have placed it in the top 10).

It's a shame, really, that Pinkel is not willing to be really cutthroat with guys like Brian Jones and Bruce Walker and Dave Christensen. His stubborn loyalty to them prevented him from taking his program to the next level.

Not a Christensen fan?

What do you know about him that I don't? I really view him as the architect of the offense that did so much to move Mizzou to the cusp of...well not quite greatness, but really damn goodness.

I wouldn't have seen loyalty to him as being damaging at all, let alone as damaging as loyalty to guys like Eberflous and Yost.

Missouri's success was built upon finding diamonds in the rough. Alexander, Weatherspoon, Moore, and Egnew were all 2* players, for example. When this staff's ability to find those diamonds dried up, so did our ability to replace our NFL quality talent.

A competent staff would have used those diamonds to move up and start selecting players that are consensus solid recruits. That's what Patterson and Peterson have done at TCU and Boise. It's what Gonzaga did to build their BB program. Instead, Pinkel's staff's recruiting has made half-assed plays at targets they were never going to get and let a number of quality players slip through their grasp.

This team is going to be in atrocious shape in about three years. Early 90s bad.

Missouri's success was built upon finding diamonds in the rough. Alexander, Weatherspoon, Moore, and Egnew were all 2* players, for example. When this staff's ability to find those diamonds dried up, so did our ability to replace our NFL quality talent.

A competent staff would have used those diamonds to move up and start selecting players that are consensus solid recruits. That's what Patterson and Peterson have done at TCU and Boise. It's what Gonzaga did to build their BB program. Instead, Pinkel's staff's recruiting has made half-assed plays at targets they were never going to get and let a number of quality players slip through their grasp.

This team is going to be in atrocious shape in about three years. Early 90s bad.

I don't really think so.

Look at it this way - any SEC program is going to be at/near the head of the line when it comes to most HC options. Arkansas just took a HC from a program that had consecutive BCS appearances, FFS.

There is no excuse for an SEC school to not get a top 30 coach in the country on their staff. And Mizzou, even though they're flagging right now, can point to a recent history of success as well as a lot of money that's been donated and allocated towards improvements in facilities, etc...

And Mizzou is still the only football school in a pretty good sized state (there isn't a more populous state in the country with only 1 'flagship' university).

Pinkel's gone if he doesn't get a bowl this year...and he ain't getting into a bowl this year. So once we send these guys packing, we should be in a position to get a nice staff in here and hopefully have an off-season like Arkansas just had.

Nah, I don't see us falling to early 90's bad. But I don't see us getting much better than where we are right now for quite some time.

Missouri's success was built upon finding diamonds in the rough. Alexander, Weatherspoon, Moore, and Egnew were all 2* players, for example. When this staff's ability to find those diamonds dried up, so did our ability to replace our NFL quality talent.

A competent staff would have used those diamonds to move up and start selecting players that are consensus solid recruits. That's what Patterson and Peterson have done at TCU and Boise. It's what Gonzaga did to build their BB program. Instead, Pinkel's staff's recruiting has made half-assed plays at targets they were never going to get and let a number of quality players slip through their grasp.

This team is going to be in atrocious shape in about three years. Early 90s bad.

I think part of the lack of true "diamonds" in recent years is that Missouri's name is given a lot of respect by the scouting agencies. So guys are pretty much automatic 3-stars when they have a Missouri offer.

A guy like EJ Gaines would have been a two-star without a Missouri offer, for example.

Lack of cutthroat recruiters on staff definitely kept them bogged in the same recruiting plan:

1) Hope Missouri has good talent and get as many MO players as possible
2) Mine secondary recruiting areas based on connections and targeting second-tier kids that don't get immediate offers from the big schools in those regions.

I don't think TCU is a very good example. This year is the first year they've been ranked higher than Mizzou in recruiting rankings, and it's not a lead that is guaranteed to hold up (for example: IF Missouri flips EE OR lands Outlaw + Singleton). Other than that, they've been staring up at Mizzou in Rivals rankings.

Boise is also not a great example. That team is stuck in the 50s and has been for years.

But that's beside the point. I agree that they didn't do a good job of expanding the recruiting base. Part of that is that guys like Walker, Jones, Eberfllus, etc. just aren't good at recruiting

Singleton's a nice stopgap, I s'pose. I hate having to rely on JUCO players in football, though. It takes them a season to assimilate at all and by the time you're really starting to see strides - they're gone.